Changes Are Coming

By Staff Writer | July 1, 2016

When I returned to this magazine just over a year ago, we were discussing changes.

My return was one change. I had led these editorial efforts in the early 2000s and looked forward to working with the committed, top-notch team of executives, designers and sales folks here at Access Intelligence to rebuild this publication’s standing and its value for members of that industry.

A key part of that effort was restoring, with our June 2015 issue, the name Rotor & Wing International. We had grown into that name over four decades of serving readers and advertisers around the world. It reflected the renewed focus on our mission, which I explained then is to be the one-stop business-intelligence resource for those charged with making key decisions within rotorcraft operations worldwide.

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Last June, we also introduced a new design for the magazine to put a fresh look on how we present information. I’ve worked for and with many publications and can tell you with certainty that R&WI readers are among the most loyal enjoyed by what are now called “content providers” in trade.

Many of you have grown up professionally with R&WI; we aim to have many more do so in the years ahead. I try to keep in mind, as we work toward that goal, that this is your magazine. We tend it for you. In discussing what you want and need from R&WI, we had heard that our pages had been looking a bit old and tired. The 2015 redesign was intended to fix that.

But it wasn’t intended to be a final fix. We reached out to you at trade shows and gatherings both formal and informal and solicit your thoughts. Those conversations prompted us to further refine our look. You might note, for instance, that our cover logo this month is a bit streamlined. It is a harbinger of additional improvements to our design that we will unveil in September.

We wanted more than your thoughts on our looks. We sought your feedback on the way you receive all your most important business information and how we compare with other sources. It was clear that you consider our digital products — www.rotorandwing.com, our electronic newsletters and the digital edition of the magazine — to be a bit lacking. (An exception is our weekly Collective, which you and your colleagues read widely.)

Your assessments of those digital products were not a surprise. We feel the same way. That is why this month we unveil a new digital edition. Many of you have already received emails about this. The new edition is dynamic, well illustrated and — we trust you will find — easy to read, whether you do so on a laptop, tablet or mobile phone.

The new digital edition uses an immersive reading format that offers a cleaner look alongside striking images. Unlike the old edition, you will be able to see aggregated collections from your favorite contributors and navigate easily through past issues. (Advertisers also will have additional streams to showcase their brands, with the option to sponsor articles.)

Our former digital edition was less than “mobile-friendly,” as is our website. But that is changing, too.

Come September, we will launch a new design of our website and a new address. You may not have noticed the old URL, which had us nested under the Aviation Today umbrella. That serves as the home for R&WI and Access Intelligence’s other aviation publications and events: Avionics Magazine, Aircraft Value News, the Avionics for NextGen conference and the Global Connected Aircraft Summit.

Those endeavors all will carry on, but we will have our own distinct website. Its design will enable us to offer more content online, including more news as it happens and a greater collection of industry press releases. This information will be presented in a format comparable in look and feel to our new digital edition. Plus, you will be able to read it easily on your phone or tablet.

Linked to the new website will be our Rotorcraft Technology Summit, set for Sep 19 to 20 in Fort Worth, Texas. You can find out more about that at www.rotorcraftsummit.com.

As I wrote a year ago, we aim through our products to give you unique and exclusive insight into the aircraft, product, technological, regulatory, safety and maintenance issues that impact your operations.